Andrew Yang and Universal Basic Income (UBI)— How I Learned to Love It
I’ll admit that before hearing about Andrew Yang’s campaign I was mostly apathetic about the Democratic primaries — the chances of the candidates talking about housing affordability — or anything related to real economics at all, really — seemed to get smaller and smaller as time goes on. But then here’s this Asian guy who came out of nowhere who openly expresses his love for math, talking about Universal Basic Income (UBI, also rebranded to The Freedom Dividend) on the national stage.
Free money? I was skeptical at first, but then I saw that his zoning policies actually identified NIMBYism as the primary roadblock towards housing affordability (he is 100% correct on this, btw) so that gave me enough of a reason to pay more attention to what he had to say.
What is Universal Basic Income (UBI)?
The shortest explanation for UBI I could come up with was that everyone in the US will get a $1000 a month from the federal government, which will be paid for by a Value Added Tax (VAT) on large tech companies like Facebook and Amazon. Yang argues that this is necessary because of all the manufacturing jobs that were automated away as a result of advances in technology, especially in swing states like Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Iowa, where Donald Trump made huge, unexpected gains during the general elections in 2016.
His economic platform is actually part of his campaign platform as well, which is very unusual among Democrats right now, which will allow him to stand out during the primaries even if he does nothing different. (“It’s the economy stupid”, after all.)
Some of the arguments for The Freedom Dividend are actually fairly compelling:
- Companies like Amazon has literally paid $0 in federal taxes in recent years, so it’s about time they started paying their fair share. This is likely to be popular among those on both the left and the right.
- A Value Added Tax (VAT) is much easier to implement than other candidates’ suggestions of “breaking up Big Tech”, which is likely to be slow, messy, and leave everyone bitter and angry in the end. This has already been proven to work in other countries so the risk isn’t as high as some US pundits make it out to be. He also doesn’t “blame” the tech industry for essentially what the government itself has made into policy, so his lack of hostility will likely make implementation much smoother.
- $1000 will have a larger impact on the lower-income brackets, most of which will go right back into the economy. We already know this works to some extent since George W Bush tried to do a similar thing in 2008 through a “rebate check” that passed with bi-partisan support. The problem with Bush’s initiative was that it was a one time thing, rather than something that the American people could rely on to make future plans. UBI fixes this problem by making it more reliable as a recurring process.
- States like Alaska already do this with dividends from oil companies, and is wildly popular, even among conservatives. (Would you rather your money go to the government, or you?)
Will the Democrats Reward or Punish Him for Reaching Across the Aisle?
Now that it’s looking likely that Yang will pretty much be in the primaries all the way to the end, there’s a good chance that even if he doesn’t win, he will be able to change course of political discourse on the national stage in fairly significant ways. As for his appeal during the general elections, he is also genuinely liked and respected by people like Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingram, and other conservatives who strongly self-identifies as being “right-wing”. Partisans sometimes posts pictures of him standing with the “deplorables” and accuse him of sleeping with the enemy, but they usually don’t see the bigger point that he’s actually converting a lot of them back over to the left.
The debates will be a litmus test for the Democratic party if they’re really willing to do what it takes to win — someone willing to talk about economics in great detail, someone willing to reach across the aisle in order to broaden their appeal outside of party politics. Here we have a candidate who’s already doing all of that, but will they embrace him or try to crush him like they did with Bernie Sanders during the 2016 primaries? But he is an enterpreneur, after all — and he should be well aware of the fact that after they stop laughing at you, they will fight you — so he’s probably got a plan for that, too.
Only time will tell — but it should turn out to be an interesting ride, either way.
[Ryan is the Online Director at Abundant Housing LA. Views here are mine, not the organization’s. He’s also the founder of the YIMBY Arts Project, which is starting a gaming/political podcast series with Fallout 76 as its backdrop. Support the project by downloading the Brave Browser, using this link!]
